Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1998/05/10
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]At 11:24 AM 5/11/98 +0900, Tom Kumagai wrote: >I would like to ask you why some of you are picking on my country, being an >amateur I don't know much, but at least I can say that Nikon, Canon,and Pentax >are one of the best 35mm cameras available. Not to mention Minolta. >Some of you consider that Japanese manufactures' imitating Leica/Contax >technologies are big deal, but I remember Russian, British, and even >American manufacturers were manufacturing SM Leica copies like Fed, Reid, >and KARDON. (At least I can say that today's Japan makes >better 35mm cameras than these countries) Why you accuse just Japanese >manufactures for it? I don't recall reading any Japan-bashing messages of late on the LUG, Tom, but I do delete a lot of traffic unread. If any have appeared, I am certain it was unintented: we are a rather polite group here, for the most part. The English and Americans made legal copies of the Leica designs in the Reid and Kardon, as the patent rights in those countries passed to the governments when German assets were seized at the outbreak of the War. The Soviets made legal copies of the Leica designs AFTER the War, as they acquired this right, by allotment from the Allied Control Commission's Committee on Optical Reparations (by which organization LHSA's Emil Keller was employed when he ran the Leitz plant at Wetzlar in 1945 and 1946). (The Prewar FED was an outright theft, much akin to the Nikon RF and Nikon and Canon LTM lenses, and deserves equal scorn.) The Asahiflex IIb, incidentally, on which the instant-return mirror first appeared in Japan, was a pretty blatant theft of the Praktica FX design, again made without compensation to the patent owners. But, by 1954, KW had become part of VEB Kamera-Werke Dresden-Niedersedlitz which was East German, and hence no one in the West would help to protect those rights and welcomed the Japanese encroachments. Marc msmall@roanoke.infi.net FAX: +540/343-7315 Cha robh bas fir gun ghras fir!